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Obstacles to village education

Nature:

Despite a growing tendency to relate education to life in a flexible way in order to train people to meet changing needs, educational structures unrelated to current employment and actual social needs leave human resources largely untapped in many communities. Curricula in village schools may be too inflexible to train children for urban life. Time, space and staff are limited, often requiring several age groups to be taught simultaneously in the same classroom, and teachers feel there is too little time to teach effectively. Securing volunteer teachers for new programmes is a major hurdle. Individual preparation in school is not possible under the current setup. Village adults are excluded from the whole process by their preliteracy, and parents who have not themselves benefited from schooling are unable to supplement their children's schooling at home.

About the Encyclopedia

The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential is a collaboration between UIA and Mankind 2000, started in 1972. It is the result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems with which humanity is confronted, as well as the challenges such problems pose to concept formation, values and development strategies. Problems included are those identified in international periodicals but especially in the documents of some 60,000 international non-profit organizations, profiled in the Yearbook of International Organizations.

The Encyclopedia includes problems which such groups choose to perceive and act upon, whether or not their existence is denied by others claiming greater expertise. Indeed such claims and counter-claims figure in many of the problem descriptions in order to reflect the often paralyzing dynamics of international debate. In the light of the interdependence demonstrated among world problems in every sector, emphasis is placed on the need for approaches which are sufficiently complex to encompass the factions, conflicts and rival worldviews that undermine collective initiative towards a promising future.

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